Hi Pork,
=Porknpie;9715342]
So Lutherans today confess to a priest??
Yes!! In corporate confession, or private confession.
In corporate confession at the beginning of Divine Worship, following confession of sins, the pastor says:
"as a called and ordained servant of Christ and by His authority, I therefore forgive you all of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In private confession, the basic formula used follows that which is presented in the Small Catechism.
bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#confession
The Lutherans that I know say “faith alone”…if I said this to them they would ask me where did Luther say this…saved by “Faith and Works”? No. He inserted “Faith Alone” in his bible when he knew the greek did not have the word “Alone”.
And of course, he said he wanted the translation to be German, not Greek. It isn’t a tranliteration.
If you want to say that we are justified by faith working through love (Gal 5:6) we will say amen.
Agree…but his very different manner went again the teaching of 1,500 years. By what authority? “By Martin Luther”. Not a good argument.
Actually, it is not so different at all. And not so different that recent Lutheran / Catholic dialogue states what I posted above.
prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/l-rc/doc/e_l-rc_eucharist.html
What we haven’t done is explain it in metaphysical terms (Transubstantiation), which is, frankly, a development not found in the early Church, nor in the current EO.
Sola Scriptura had never been thought of before Luther. It led to the Pheasants revolt and self-interpretation of scripture which Luther himself lamented before his death.
The early church also had no concept of a Great Schism, where patriarchs of the Church were divided on the meaning of parts of Tradition.
This self-interpretation has led to much division then and today.
In terms of doctrine, Lutherans don’t (or shouldn’t) practice private interpretation. What others do is something one should approach them about.
Christ did not give us a bible, he gave us a church. A church that existed for 400 years before the biblical canon was developed.
He gave us both, and Lutheranism accepts the early 7 councils.
One that had 73 books and not 66. The written word of God in protestantism is incomplete. One can argue either Luther put the books in the back of the bible and held them less than infallible and/or a printing company removed them. Either way, it started with Luther.
Actually, questioning the deuterocanon stated long before Luther. It was the basis of Luther’s questioning of them. If one is to blame Luther, then one must hold others, all the way back to St. Jerome, and Eusebius with the NT books, accountable as well.
As stated above, his denying or relocating 7 books that disappeared would be a start. So remove 2 Maccabbees and you remove some but still not all of the biblical support for praying for the dead and the understanding of Purgatory.
He didn’t deny them. He questioned them. To claim that Luter’s sole intent was to remove books based on doctrine, one must then show that all seven held doctrinal stances Luther had concerns about, and that isn’t the case. One must also explain why he included the Prayer of Mannasseh. The confessions make reference to 2 Macc when talking about prayer for the dead, and Luther seems far more concerned about the practices that grew up around Purgatory than he was Purgatory itself. It is also the case the the EO does not hold to Purgatory, and they have 2 Macc in the canon.
Jon
